


The Wanderer

by gabrielandworms



Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Stalking, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:01:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27207052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielandworms/pseuds/gabrielandworms
Summary: The Wanderer appears at the intersection of Douglass Street and St. John's Way on every Wednesday evening. And all the while June Price is a prisoner within her own apartment.
Kudos: 3





	The Wanderer

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically a... prequel? Prologue? It's... uh, a precursor to a much larger story, regardless of what it's technically called. Which is a worst case scenario for June, since she is really not having a good time.
> 
> June Price's surname comes from the absolute legend of an actor, Vincent Price. This doesn't contribute anything to the story. I just really like Vincent Price.

The Wanderer first appeared at the intersection of Douglass Street and St. John’s Way. They stood motionless beneath the old street lamp, with the wide brim of their hat casting a shadow that obscured their face. They appeared every Wednesday evening with an abruptness that made them seem as though they had manifested from the autumn air itself. June never saw them in the process of walking. She would look out her bedroom window to see nothing beneath that street lamp, but the next time she glanced down she would suddenly see them standing in the midst of that beam of light, still as a statue.

They were hardly the only oddity that would appear below her window at night. Sometimes June would spot an older woman in a striped dress and patchwork coat taking photographs of herself with various taxidermy, always by the trashcan across the street. Every Saturday, close to midnight, June would watch a young man with a purple undercut haul an encased cello down the sidewalk, a tattered backpack in the shape of a bear slung over one lean shoulder. She also occasionally spotted a woman dressed entirely in white lace that would draw spiral after spiral upon the street with a plethora of rainbow-colored chalk.

Those people were all lively and animated though. Despite their peculiarities, they were all decidedly _human._ The Wanderer, by contrast, emanated an eerie and otherworldly presence. Even the most stoic and rigid of people were prone to their own set of subconscious fidgets and gestures. Even June herself would twitch her fingers absent-mindedly when seated in silence. The Wanderer, by contrast, was beyond even these most inane of movements. They were completely still, with not even the heavy drapes of their coat rustled by the November breeze.

June was terrified of the Wanderer.

She started to have nightmares after she first laid her eyes upon the Wanderer. They always began with a pressure upon her chest, as though the full mass of another person was lying upon her sleeping form, but before should could awake and wrestle herself free from such a crushing weight, she would be dragged down into the incomprehensible hell of her dreams.

Hands would wrap around the column of her neck as she wandered the vast wasteland of the nightmares, but before she could turn and identify the source of those hands, fingers with too many joints would press down upon her pulse. She would collapse to the ground, and then the taste of fresh soil would fill her mouth. She would scream, but no sound would come forth as those same hands yanked her into the dark earth. The nightmares always ended the same, with June entombed by that darkness, as though she had been buried alive.

The earthy taste lingered on her tongue even in the waking world, and when June looked in the mirror she often discovered the ghost of fingerprints upon her throat. June never vocalized her fears though, whether they were of the nightmares or of the Wanderer themself. She instead wrapped a scarf around her marred throat and buried her growing anxieties within the complex whorls of her mind. As she typically did, she kept her concerns repressed.

June only truly confronted her dread on one brisk December morning. The small kitchen was filled with the smell of crushed garlic and chopped basil, and the tinny sound of music echoed from the old radio. The repetitive clicking of a knife against a cutting board thrummed over the other sounds as June busied herself with chopping a particularly rotund onion. The recurring sound of the knife slicing through the onion again and again soothed June, and she found herself pulled into a lull as she continued chopping away.

That is, until the blade sliced into her finger. The sudden flare of pain jerked June back into awareness, and she swore as she dropped the knife. Her blood was a vibrant scarlet, the color harsh against the placid white of her flesh. Dark droplets splattered onto the worn wooden floor as June hurried to the sink. She turned on the faucet to rinse off the cut, but before she shoved her finger under the water, she paused. The blood from the cut was already clotting, but the clots looked unusual.

She had once watched a nature documentary about underwater creatures. For the most part, June had been familiar with the animals that dominated the footage. She recognized low-set eyes of the invasive silver carp, and she was well acquainted with the muted shells of pre-boiled crawdads. But the tubifex worms had been entirely foreign to her.

June was reminded of those eerie red worms as she gazed upon the forming blood clots. They resembled those underwater tendrils, and she could swear that they were moving with the same pulsating movements. _No, that can’t be right,_ she thought, but her stomach rolled with unease all the same. One of the clot-tendrils swung from the cut, as though it was trying to yank itself free from the open wound. June nearly retched at the sight and shoved her finger under the faucet, though she was suddenly less concerned with cleaning the cut and more focused on ridding herself of those unpleasant clots.

The sound of her own rapid heartbeat roared in June’s ears, and she found herself no longer hungry. The garlic and basil were left cooling and forgotten in the frying pan as June wound a towel around her hand and fled from the kitchen.

She hurried into her bedroom, frantic as a startled rabbit, as she clung her injured hand to her chest. And then, when she glanced out the window, she saw the Wanderer, statuesque as always. The chaos she felt appeared worlds away from that stoic, rigid individual. She felt a growing clot-worm twitch beneath the towel, and she tightened the grip on her finger in response. Nothing seemed particularly off about the Wanderer—nothing more than usual, at least—but she still felt a gnawing unease upon the sight of them.

The unease transformed into contempt, and June found herself nauseated just looking upon the Wanderer. “Fuck off,” she muttered under her breath in an attempt to regain her composure, and she turned away from the window to find her first aid kit.

She didn’t see the Wanderer raise their head to look up at the dingy window.

She also couldn’t have predicted the downward spiral that defined the following weeks. The cut never healed, and she found that more clot-worms would sprout if she left the wound unbandaged. June considered going to the doctor time and time again, but she always hesitated right before calling the clinic. How could she explain the situation without revealing herself to be an abomination, for surely the growth of these parasitic blood worms was not typical? What help would the medical staff be when confronted with the tendrils forcing their way from her body? If she went to the doctor, would she not be condemning herself to the life of a medical anomaly to be poked and prodded and dissected?

So June never went to the doctor. She simply hid in her apartment, her weeks of work left in disarray upon her desk as she instead spent her waking time sprawled out upon the couch. She felt constantly exhausted but slumber offered her no reprieve. If anything, her nightmares had escalated.

The Wanderer visited June in her dreams. The figure would crawl on top of her, and the full weight of their body always pressed down uncomfortably upon her sleeping form. The Wanderer never spoke, but she could feel the squirming of worms upon worms beneath their dark coat, as though the Wanderer’s very flesh was made of the same tendrils that sprung forth from her blood.

The Wanderer was a constant presence even when June was awake. They never moved from their spot under the street lamp anymore. Every time June awoke she would look out her window and, as always, the Wanderer stood in place. The weight of her fatigue became heavier every time her gaze found itself locked onto the Wanderer.

In fact, she suspected that if she rose from her bed, she would find them still standing outside. However, she was too tired to even consider the prospect, so instead June cleared her throat as she buried herself back beneath her blankets. January had introduced the new year, but her predicament was the same. Every cut she collected, no matter how small, was covered with a tightly wound bandage to keep the worms at bay. _I look like a mummy,_ she thought dryly as she pressed a sweaty cheek to her pillow. _Appropriate, I guess. I feel like death._

She looked up at the bedroom window, with the cold morning light cutting through from between the heavy curtains. Her fingers twitched as she looked at the beam of light. Then June closed her eyes and, for the first time in weeks, she truly slept. She didn’t even stir when the Wanderer entered the bedroom, their movements less like a human and more akin to a rolling fog, and loomed over her, much like they did in her nightmares.

One of the Wanderer’s gloved hands came to June’s throat. Her arteries were pronounced against the column, much as was the dark birthmark below her jaw. A weird squirming was visible beneath the fabric of the glove as they ran their index finger carefully along her neck.

For a long moment, nothing happened. June continued to sleep undisturbed. But then a long and delicate red line bloomed along her throat before it abruptly transformed into a gaping chasm. June startled as she was suddenly jerked back into the waking world, and she reached for her throat. She didn’t feel the tacky warmth of her blood though. She only felt the worms that birthed themselves from her life essence, squirming and writhing with a ferocity that she had never previously encountered.

June couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even breathe. She could only feel the tendrils tearing themselves from her body and winding themselves around the Wanderer’s hand. They moved with urgency as they sought any opening in the Wanderer’s clothing. They slipped beneath the cuffs of their coat, and they vanished beneath the collar of their shirt. They continued to flee June’s body for the Wanderer’s own until the very last drop of the clot-worms fled the woman’s body.

The Wanderer never spoke, but at that moment they huffed a sound that almost sounded like relief. June’s blood, the worms, intermingled with their own, until the worms were indistinguishable from each other.

The Wanderer didn’t leave immediately. They continued to lie on top of June, and they ran their hand over the bloodless gash of her throat with a startling reverence. Even if the Wanderer needed to feed—if that was truly what had transpired—they didn’t appear to view June as a lesser creature that existed solely as a meal.

Perhaps that was why the Wanderer lifted June into their large arms and left the cold apartment with her corpse.

Perhaps that was also why, when the Wanderer finally left the labyrinth of that city—when they finally surrounded themself with the secluded wild—they buried June in a shallow grave.

Perhaps that was also why, after a week in the dark earth, June awoke.


End file.
